3. Project strategy and scope management
The vision of the project gives the overall direction for the project. Vision not only has an important role in leadership and management of the project team, but also gives means to manage the project product. Vision creation needs management though it needs to remain creative process [22]. Today’s high environmental complexity requires faster decisions, better allocation of scarce resources and a clearer focus [13,8]. Christenson and Walker [11] identified four characteristics that a vision should possess: it must be understood; it must be motivational; it must be credible; and it must be both demanding and challenging. They also claimed that though a charismatic leader may provide much energy and useful motivational impulse to the development of an effective vision, a stakeholder reference group may form a more enduring framework for vision development and planned deployment.
The project aims to produce products or services. The sum of services and products is called project scope. The scope includes aspects of (1) quality of the project product and (2) performance, functionality and technical properties of the project product [3]. The scope of the project is driven by the purpose, or expected benefit ([31] p. 8). The scope management of a project includes the processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully [27].
Innovation process or project can be understood, which comprises of three different phases: front-end phase, offering development phase and commercialization phase (see e.g. [10,18]).
According to Koen et al. [18] the front-end phase consist of five different elements:
1. Opportunity identification: identification of opportunities driven by the business goals that the organization wants to pursue.
2. Opportunity analysis: translation of identified opportunities into specific business and technology opportunities and execution of technology and market assessment.
3. Idea genesis: creation of description of idea or product concept.
4. Idea selection: selection of the most valuable business ideas.
5. Concept and technology development: development of a business case.
Strategic process includes measurement, estimation, calculation, comparing and assessing probabilities [30] . The objectives of a project are set for the content, quality, time, cost and some resources of the project. The strategy of the project defines the objectives, the criteria to assess the project success and the risk management plan. For example, the purpose of a project can be unclear and ill defined outset if a key objective of the project is to create something
new, to learn, to explore and to add substance and meaning to the broad outline of the organization strategy [17].
3.1. Project management strategies
The project manager can choose among many different processes to manage the project. PMI [27] introduces many accepted processes. For example, project risk management and teaming practises can be done only roughly or the project manager can use a more thorough way of analyzing risks and/or forming the team.
One way of choosing the project management way is to analyze the type of project. The project vary on many ways on what kind of knowledge is used and what kind of change is going to occur.
The companies use early warning signal system to control the projects. Somebody observes the signals and then one reacts to the signal if it is appropriate to react. According to Sachez and Perez [28] the Spanish companies most often used the following early warning signals: project cost and time deviations and achievement of technological goals. The companies often created their own checklists to follow the signals.
Norrie and Walker [24] used a balanced scorecard framework as a strategy to communicate the strategic measures and connections to the business. They found that it aided the communication and the decision-making in the project.